e girls
themselves. Then he blew the warning blast to tell all below on the
hillside that the _Sky-rocket_ was coming.

Ta-ra! ta-ra! ta-ra-ra-ra! Ta-_rat!_

With a rush the sled was off. It disappeared around the evergreen clump.
The hum of its runners was dying away when suddenly there sounded a
chorus of screams, evidently from the _Sky-rocket_ crew. Following this,
a crash and a turmoil of cries, expressing both anger and fright, rang
out upon the lower hillside.

CHAPTER II

THE FAT MAN WITH HIS GROUCH

Nan Sherwood had steered this big bobsled down Pendragon Hill many times.
She had no fear of an accident when they started, although the rush of
wind past them seemed to stop her breath and made her eyes water.

There really was not a dangerous spot on the whole slide. It crossed but
one road and that the path leading down to Professor Krenner's cabin. At
this intersection of the slide and the driveway, Walter Mason had erected
a sign-board on which had been rudely printed:

STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!

Few people traversed this way in any case; and it did seem as though
those who did would obey the injunction of the sign. Not so a heavy-set,
burly looking man who was tramping along the half-beaten path just as Nan
and her chums dashed down the hill on the bobsled. This big man, whose
broad face showed no sign of cheerfulness, but exactly the opposite,
tramped on without a glance at the sign-board. He started across the
slide as the prow of the _Sky-rocket_, with Nan clinging to the wheel,
shot into view.

The girls shrieked in chorus--all but Nan herself. The stubborn, fat man,
at last awakened to his danger, plunged ahead. There was a mighty
collision!

The fat man dived head-first into a soft snow bank on one side of the
slide; the bobsled plunged into another soft bank on the other side, and
all the girls were buried, some of them over their heads, in the snow.

They were not hurt--

"Save in our dignity and our pompadours!" cried Laura Polk, the
red-haired girl, coming to the surface like a whale, "to blow."

"Goodness--gracious--Agnes!" ejaculated the big girl, who was known
as "Procrastination" Boggs. "What ever became of that man who got
in our way?"

Nan Sherwood had already gotten out of the drift and had hauled her
particular chum, Bess Harley, with her to the surface. Grace Mason and
Lillie Nevins were crying a little; but Nan had assured herself at a
glance that neither of the timid o